


but my head is loose

by wrongbed



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-15 11:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4605729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrongbed/pseuds/wrongbed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That time Dan didn’t want to show his phone’s background during a liveshow. </p>
<p>(it's short and it's angsty yikes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	but my head is loose

—

Tuesday night live show. Tradition.

Black shirt, black sweater. Soft lighting. Ergonomic chair. Tradition, tradition, tradition.

Not just for Dan, but for thousands (tens of thousands??) of viewers, too. It’s weird how people know that this is happening, and make it a part of their weekly routine. Comforting, though. 

Dan’s used to big numbers by now. He’s used to the chat comments moving fast, blurring together. Used to waiting for a couple seconds until the lines stall long enough for Dan to read them.

“What’s your phone background?” 

Dan isn’t really thinking when he reads the question out loud. It’s in the middle of the screen, it doesn't seem overtly sexual, so he reads it.

“Uh, it's,” he says. Shit. He thinks about his phone background. Shit, shit, shit. 

(He should be more careful during live shows, he knows this. Phil tells him all the time. But a whole hour of vigilance isn’t physically sustainable. Dan’s built a career around being able to /edit/. This isn’t in his skill set.)

“Uh, it’s a picture,” Dan says. “Which is boring.”

He knows his tone is balanced, and his eyes can’t give away /that/ much. Still, it’s a weird noncommittal response, and someone out there (or a thousand someones out there) won’t buy it.

He goes on. He has no choice. This kind of thing has happened before, will happen again, it’s all part of the deal. He likes live shows too much to give them up, though. They bring in cash, is one thing. But there’s also a genuineness to them. And it’s nice to have thousands of people listening to the weird shit he has to say, not because his script is quirky, but because it’s real.

Sometimes too real, apparently.

—

Phil has Dan’s live show opened in a side tab. He’s only half-listening, mostly busy tapping out emails, sometimes switching over to a Buzzfeed article about sea lion pups.

But Phil hears Dan’s tone waver, and he clicks on the YouNow tab. He can’t figure out what Dan is referencing, but the chat comments turn onto the topic of phone backgrounds, and then Phil can put the pieces together.

Phil glances upward, trying to remember what Dan’s phone background is. He can’t.

So when Dan’s show ends, Phil waits a while—the sea lion pup article isn’t going to finish itself—and then heads over to Dan’s room.

“Hey,” he says, leaning on the doorframe and doing an awkward kind of bending motion into the bedroom. “Nice show.”

Dan turns away from his desk to flash Phil a sarcastic smile. “Thanks, worked super hard on it.” (And yeah, that’s the thing about live shows, are they work? Are they entertainment? It’s all very blurry. That may be part of the reason why it’s so easy for words to slip out, caked in ambiguity.)

“So, what’s your phone background?” Phil asks.

“Oh God,” Dan sighs. “You saw that part?”

“It wasn’t too bad,” Phil shrugs. “You brushed it off.”

“But, you know, people.”

“People. Phans with a ‘ph.'” Phil nods. “People with a 'ph.' Pheople. Have we ever thought of that one? Pheople?”

“Ha, no, I don’t think either of us has ever had that stroke of genius before,” Dan says, giving Phil a Look (because what the fuck, Phil). “But the, um, /pheople/ wouldn’t be too excited about my phone. It’s not a photo of us or anything.”

“What is it then?” Phil asks. “Kanye?”

Dan does that laugh thing that gradually evolves into a faux-serious nod. “Yep, yep. Don’t want the people to know about Danye,” he says.

“What would Kim think?” Phil says, widening his mouth into a Home Alone “o.”

Dan narrows his eyes at Phil’s face, but gives him a solid laugh anyway. Phil accepts it graciously.

“Seriously, though,” Phil says. “What’s your phone background right now?”

Dan stops laughing, blushes a little bit, but retains a smile. “Um,” he says. “Right now it’s a picture of me and Jenn.”

“Ah,” Phil says. His face doesn’t change.

“I didn’t think people would handle that well,” Dan adds.

“Yeah,” Phil says. “Probably not.”

Phil swallows—you know, a normal human bodily function, not weird at all—and says, “All right, just wondering.” Ends the conversation there. 

Then he pushes himself off of the door frame, starts to walk back to his room.

“Hey Phil,” Dan calls.

Yeah, that was probably too abrupt.

He backtracks. “Yeah?”

Dan’s lips are pursed at first, but then he flashes an awkward sort of smile. “This isn’t, you know, particularly relevant yet. But do you think I’ll have to tell the, uh, the audience? Eventually?”

“Tell them what,” Phil says, quick, even though he knows.

“About Jenn,” Dan says. “Obviously.”

“Oh,” Phil says, and he feels something in his throat kind of itch, and his face is getting a little warmer, redder. He chalks it up to the room temperature—the heat wave and all that. “I guess,” he says, after what feels like maybe a billion years, maybe two billion, “we should probably ask management about it. I can send an email, or we can wait until the meeting next week.”

“No, no,” Dan says. “It’s not, like, that serious yet or anything. I don’t think we have to bring it up.”

Phil at least knows how to handle this aspect of the situation, because there are like, pre-written terms. “It’s in our contract, Dan,” he says. “We have to tell ChannelFlip about longterm relationships.”

Dan tilts his head.

“Or what, you’re gonna rat me out?” Dan asks.

“No, obviously not,” Phil says. He wants to joke about it, he knows that there’s a joke /right there/, but he can’t find it.

“Okay, well,” Dan says. “Don’t worry about it. It’s probably not going to get to a point where we have to, you know, discuss it in business meetings, for God’s sake.”

“Okay,” Phil says, and this time he gets to his room faster, closes the door. Alone now, again, finally.

His face is still hot, so he checks on his air conditioner. Climate control. That’s the solution here. It’s working. There’s air flow. He feels his head start to clear.

“Okay,” Phil says, completely to himself, which is weird. But he talks to himself for a living, so it’s not that weird.

And then, on cue, his phone buzzes on his bed. It's a text from his mom. How endearing. How normal. It quells his heart rate, normalizes his breathing. He reads the text message and remembers the world outside the apartment, still turning. He taps out a reply and hits the home button. Familiar motions. Normal normal normal.

And then he sees his home screen photo.

It’s a photo of the two of them, which might not be so important if not for the fact Dan’s face takes up most of the shot, most of the screen. Because of course it does. Because of course that’s what Phil (subconsciously? purposefully?) wants to see every time he turns on his phone. 

And that's weird, maybe. Because Dan's phone is Jenn, and Phil's phone is Dan, and maybe that's a parallel that should be noted.

But at the same time, it's not that noteworthy. Not really. Because it’s Dan, always. It’s always been Dan, and in this moment of melodrama, Phil knows that it always /will/ be Dan, but it /never/ will be Dan. And. Okay.

Fuck.


End file.
